LENIN COLLECTION.

in Bern: Zetkin bypassed the question of condemning social-chauvinism!! out of a desire for "peace" with Südekum and Kautsky4)??

If you disagree with this tactic, cross out [these] 2 words at once.
If you agree, undertake to translate (1) the manifest of the C.C. (No. 33 of "S[ocial]-D[emocrat]") and (2) the Bern resolutions (No. 40 of "S[ocial]-D[emocrat]"5) into Swedish and Norwegian and correspond with Höglund—are they willing on such a basis (naturally, we shall not part over particulars) to prepare a joint declaration (or resolution).
One must hurry with this with u t m o s t   u r g e n c y.
So, I await your reply.
All manner of greetings.
Your Lenin.

_____

1) A preliminary conference preceding the Zimmerwald Conference took place in Bern in July 1915.
2) This concerns the future Zimmerwald Conference.
3) H a a s e — B e r n s t e i n — K a u t s k y, that is, the centrists.
4) The women's conference in Bern, which took place in April 1915 and was convened by comrade Clara Z e t k i n, was the first manifestation of an internationalist revolutionary current on an international scale. From tactical considerations, the leaders of the conference did not include in the resolution adopted by the conference a direct condemnation of social-chauvinists, which provoked Vladimir Ilyich's angry tirade set forth in the text. It was calculated, of course, not so much at an objective assessment of the enormous role played by the organizers of the women's conference in the dissemination of internationalist ideas, as at bringing pressure to bear on Vladimir Ilyich's correspondent.
5) This concerns the resolutions of the meeting of foreign groups of Bolsheviks, which took place in Bern on March 20-22, 1915, and was published in No. 40 of "The Social-Democrat."

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19.

Dear A. M.! We are sending you money tomorrow. Thank you very much for news from Russia.

In principle we have nothing against c[onspira]cy, we hope you will be extremely cautious.

As to the arming of the people resp. disarming, it still seems to me that we cannot change our pr[o]g[ram]me. If the words about class struggle are not a phrase in the liberal spirit (which it has become among opportunists, Kautsky and Pl[ekha]nov), then how can one object to the fact of history—the transformation of this struggle, under certain conditions, into civil war? How can, furthermore, an oppressed class in general be against the arming of the people?

To deny this means to fall into quasi-anarchist attitudes toward imperialism: this, in my view, is observed among some of the Left even among us. If imperialism, then supposedly neither national self-determination nor arming of the people is needed! This is glaring falsehood. It is precisely for a socialist revolution against imperialism that both are necessary.

Is it "feasible"? Such a criterion is false. Without revolution almost our entire minimum pr[o]g[ram]me is not feasible. Feasibility in such a formulation will slide into philistinism.

It seems to me that this question (l i k e a l l questions of s[ocial]-d[emocratic] t a c t i c s now) can be posed o n l y in connection with an assessment of (and accounting for) opportunism. And it is clear that "disarming" as a tactical slogan is opportunism. A provincial sort at that, reeking of petty statism, of detachment from the struggle, of narrow-mindedness: "my cottage is at the edge"...

A. Kollontai.
[Summer 1915]